Fourth victory for the champion – second with Black – 7.5-3.5 . Final score left for reading
As anticipated, Magnus Carlsen ended Ian Nepomniachtchi’s agony with three games remaining after winning the 11th game of his best-14 game World Chess Championship match in Dubai on Friday.
Carlsen punished Napo’s mistake on the 23rd move with a tactical plan and eventually finished the job in 49 moves. The champion’s fourth victory – second with black – left the final score reading 7.5–3.5.
It was the fourth time Carlsen had defended a world title he won in 2013 from Viswanathan Anand. He overcame the challenges of Anand (2014), Sergei Karjakin (2016) and Fabiano Caruana (2018) before destroying Napo.
After five drawn games, Carlsen took a 136-move victory in the sixth. After this, it was clear that Napo was not the same. He made a pawn mistake three times in the next five matches and the result was a premature end of the match.
“Of course, I’m relieved. It’s hard to feel that great joy when the situation was so comfortable to start with, but I’m happy with a very good performance overall,” was Carlsen’s initial reaction after winning his fifth world title.
During the post-match media conference, Carlsen said, “I didn’t expect it to go like this,” and continued, “I think it was a pretty good professional performance overall. No regrets at all, just a lot. Satisfied.
“I think it is similar to my first match with Anand (in 2013), who was quite similar and nervous in the beginning, when I got my first win, it was the same story: it was relatively clean from there. Was out.”
On Friday, after Napo planned the Italian opening, the game proceeded on expected lines. Once Napo made a mistake on the 23rd turn, it took only 79 seconds for Carlsen to find the exact continuation. He immediately traded his rook for a knight and took it back by force after an exchange of queens. He ended up with a rook and a spare pawn near the pawn. Carlson sacrifices his pawn to the ‘queen’ and then is forced to resign after four moves.
On his part, Nepo said, “I have lost some stupid games in my career but not in such a short time.”
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